Managing Component Scrappage Rates in Customer Supplied Assembly Kits
Provide clear overage buffers and factory reels to prevent line starvation, setup material waste, and downtime charges during surface-mount assembly.
Feeder Tape Loss
Material Attrition
Component wastage occurs at the beginning and end of a reel because the carrier tape must be threaded through the feeder mechanism before the first part can be picked. This feeder tape loss accounts for the non-recoverable parts that remain in the leader or trailer sections of the tape during machine setup and teardown. It happens every time.
Process Overhead
Short production runs suffer more from this attrition because the number of parts lost per setup represents a higher percentage of the total kit. While feeder tape loss is often estimated at a flat number of components per reel, the actual count depends on the feeder design and the length of the leader required for the take-up reel. Modern intelligent feeders attempt to minimize this waste.
Inventory Impact
Procurement teams must order a surplus of components to ensure the production line does not run out of parts before the batch is finished. When calculating the total required quantity, the expected feeder tape loss is added to the predicted pick and place attrition rate. If the wastage exceeds the planned buffer, the assembly process stops, resulting in a line down situation.
This loss is a necessary cost of high-speed automation that cannot be entirely eliminated.